Essentially manufacturers have two options when it comes to machine alignment. They can hire an outside laser alignment contractor or they can do the work themselves in house. For the majority of applications, companies can do their own alignment.
Here are the top 3 advantages of doing laser alignment in house:
Convenience
When laser alignment is handled in house it means that you don’t have to wait around for someone that’s not associated with your company to show up when a machine breaks down or something isn’t working properly or efficiently. If you are able to use a piece of equipment that you have on your premises, make the alignment, and get the machine up and running again quickly you won’t have employees that are waiting around, customers that are waiting for product, or raw materials piling up.
Cost Savings
Doing as much of your own laser alignment in house as possible, reduces unexpected down time which translates into cost savings. Unplanned downtime can be very expensive. If a machine breaks down and you must rely on a third party to get it up and running again it means that many hours or even days of production time can be lost.
Preventative Maintenance
It’s not just when a machine breaks down that laser alignment is needed. It can also be used for preventative maintenance. Employees that actually work with machines on a daily basis have a very good understanding of how the machine works and are most often much more knowledgeable than an outside vendor coming in. By handling laser alignment in house with laser alignment equipment, it puts a powerful set of tools into the hands of production workers so that they can keep a machine running efficiently and prevent problems.
Another option is a mix of in house and outsourced laser alignment. Some production lines are complicated and may be too difficult to align with an in-house team, for example; a paper mill. In these instances many of the standard, ongoing, and routine alignments can be performed by your in-house team and outside alignment contractor is reserved for the most challenging alignment tasks on a scheduled basis.
